e548 — The Uncomfortable Valley

Photo by NEOM on Unsplash Published 23 March 2026 e548 with Michael and Michael – Stories and discussion on uncomfortable valley & uncanny valley, Nintendo’s Talking Flower, 8bit Pixel Agents for AI orchestration and a whole lot more. Michael and Michael get things rolling while Andy is away on an article discussing the animated emojis in Microsoft Teams.  Fast Company article author Rebecca Heilweil describes these emojis as the ‘uncomfortable valley’ due to the animations that imbue the emojis shared in Teams with potentially unintended additional meaning.  Check out the link for a comparison graphic showing the similarities and differences between the uncanny and uncomfortable valleys. Switching to robotic animation, Michael and Michael take a look at Nintendo’s Talking Flower, which reminds them of the Alarmo alarm clock.  Next, a digital camera that provides mini quests that are satisfied by taking a picture of “a tiny thing” or “a hidden face”. Turning to AI, the co-hosts check out Pixel Agents, an 8bit representation of agents allowing the human orchestrator to monitor all the agents performing their tasks in a concurrent manner.  Michael R highlights a Mac local orchestrator called Osaurus.  Rounding out this week’s episode is a Washington Post about jobs that AI may take on, a story about ChatGPT assisting with cancer research, and an intriguing video about Devo. Which Pixel People professions would you want to have in your Pixel Agent virtual office?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz@mastodon.social (our home for now) and let us know!  These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it. Selected Links Tech Fast Company article: The uncomfortable valley: Microsoft Teams emoji faces have got to go Wikipedia article: Uncanny Valley Games at Work e308: Feline Filters (for discussion on the Uncanny Valley) The Verge article: Weird Nintendo never went away Nintendo Talking Flower Nintendo Alarmo